Invitation to a Beheading (6 page)

He lamented for a while, groaned, cracked all his joints, then he got up from the cot, put on the abhorred dressing
gown, and began to wander around. Once again he examined all the inscriptions on the walls in the hope of somewhere discovering a new one. Like a fledgling crow on a stump, he stood for a long while on the chair, motionlessly gazing up at the beggarly ration of sky. He walked some more. Once more he read the eight rules for inmates, which he already knew by heart:

1. Leaving the prison building is positively forbidden.

2. A prisoner’s meekness is a prison’s pride.

3. You are firmly requested to maintain quiet between one and three
P.M
. daily.

4. You are not allowed to entertain females.

5. Singing, dancing and joking with the guards is permitted only by mutual consent and on certain days.

6. It is desirable that the inmate should not have at all, or if he does, should immediately himself suppress nocturnal dreams whose content might be incompatible with the condition and status of the prisoner, such as: resplendent landscapes, outings with friends, family dinners, as well as sexual intercourse with persons who in real life and in the waking state would not suffer said individual to come near, which individual will therefore be considered by the law to be guilty of rape.

7. Inasmuch as he enjoys the hospitality of the prison, the prisoner should in his turn not shirk participation in cleaning and other work of prison personnel in such measure as said participation is offered him.

8. The management shall in no case be responsible for the loss of property or of the inmate himself.

Anguish, anguish, Cincinnatus. Pace some more, Cincinnatus, brushing with your robe first the walls, then the
chair. Anguish! The books heaped on the table have all been read. And, even though he knew that they had all been read, Cincinnatus searched, rummaged, peeked into a thick volume … Without sitting down, he leafed through the already familiar pages.

It was a bound magazine, published once upon a time, in a barely remembered age. The prison library, considered the second in the city for its size and the rarity of its volumes, kept several such curiosities. That was a remote world, where the simplest objects sparkled with youth and an inborn insolence, proceeding from the reverence that surrounded the labor devoted to their manufacture. Those were years of universal fluidity; well-oiled metals performed silent soundless acrobatics; the harmonious lines of men’s suits were dictated by the unheard-of limberness of muscular bodies; the flowing glass of enormous windows curved around corners of buildings; a girl in a bathing suit flew like a swallow so high over a pool that it seemed no larger than a saucer; a high-jumper lay supine in the air, having already made such an extreme effort that, if it were not for the flaglike folds of his shorts, he would seem to be in lazy repose; and water ran, glided endlessly; the gracefulness of falling water, the dazzling details of bathrooms; the satiny ripples of the ocean with a two-winged shadow falling on it. Everything was lustrous and shimmering; everything gravitated passionately toward a kind of perfection whose definition was absence of friction. Reveling in all the temptations of the circle, life whirled to a state of such giddiness that the ground fell away and, stumbling, falling, weakened by nausea and languor—ought I to say it?—finding itself in a new dimension, as it were … Yes, matter has grown old
and weary, and little has survived of those legendary days—a couple of machines, two or three fountains—and no one regrets the past, and even the very concept of “past” has changed.

“But then perhaps,” thought Cincinnatus, “I am misinterpreting these pictures. Attributing to the epoch the characteristics of its photograph. The wealth of shadows, the torrents of light, the gloss of a tanned shoulder, the rare reflection, the fluid transitions from one element to another—perhaps all of this pertains only to the snapshot, to a particular kind of heliotypy, to special forms of that art, and the world really never was so sinuous, so humid and rapid-just as today our unsophisticated cameras record in their own way our hastily assembled and painted world.”

“But then perhaps” (Cincinnatus began to write rapidly on a sheet of ruled paper) “I am misinterpreting … Attributing to the epoch … This wealth … Torrents … Fluid transitions … And the world really never was … Just as … But how can these ruminations help my anguish? Oh, my anguish—what shall I do with you, with myself? How dare they conceal from me … I, who must pass through an ordeal of supreme pain, I, who, in order to preserve a semblance of dignity (anyway I shall not go beyond silent pallor—I am no hero anyway …), must during that ordeal keep control of all my faculties, I, I … am gradually weakening … the uncertainty is horrible—well, why don’t you tell me, do tell me—but no, you have me die anew every morning … On the other hand, were I to know, I could perform … a short work … a record of verified thoughts … Some day someone would read it and would suddenly feel just as if he had awakened for the first time in a strange
country. What I mean to say is that I would make him suddenly burst into tears of joy, his eyes would melt, and, after he experiences this, the world will seem to him cleaner, fresher. But how can I begin writing when I do not know whether I shall have time enough, and the torture comes when you say to yourself, ‘Yesterday there would have been enough time’—and again you think, ‘If only I had begun yesterday …’ And instead of the clear and precise work that is needed, instead of a gradual preparation of the soul for that morning when it will have to get up, when—when you, soul, will be offered the executioner’s pail to wash in—Instead, you involuntarily indulge in banal senseless dreams of escape—alas, of escape … Today, when she came running in, stamping and laughing—that is, I mean—No, I still ought to record, to leave something. I am not an ordinary—I am the one among you who is alive—Not only are my eyes different, and my hearing, and my sense of taste-not only is my sense of smell like a deer’s, my sense of touch like a bat’s—but, most important, I have the capacity to conjoin all of this in one point—No, the secret is not revealed yet—even this is but the flint—and I have not even begun to speak of the kindling, of the fire itself. My life. Once, when I was a child, on a distant school excursion, when I had got separated from the others—although I may have dreamt it—I found myself, under the sultry sun of midday, in a drowsy little town, so drowsy that when a man who had been dozing on a bench beneath a bright whitewashed wall at last got up to help me find my way, his blue shadow on the wall did not immediately follow him. Oh, I know, I know, there must have been some oversight, on my part, and the shadow did not linger at all, but
simply, shall we say, it caught on the wall’s unevenness … but here is what I want to express: between his movement and the movement of the laggard shadow—that second, that syncope—there is the rare kind of time in which I live—the pause, the hiatus, when the heart is like a feather … And I would write also about the continual tremor—and about how part of my thoughts is always crowding around the invisible umbilical cord that joins this world to something—to what I shall not say yet … But how can I write about this when I am afraid of not having time to finish and of stirring up all these thoughts in vain? When she came rushing in today—only a child—here is what I want to say—only a child, with certain loopholes for my thoughts—I wondered, to the rhythm of an ancient poem—could she not give the guards a drugged potion, could she not rescue me? If only she would remain the child she is, but at the same time mature and understand—and then it would be feasible: her burning cheeks, a black windy night, salvation, salvation … And I’m wrong when I keep repeating that there is no refuge in the world for me. There is! I’ll find it! A lush ravine in the desert! A patch of snow in the shadow of an alpine crag! This is unhealthy, though—what I am doing: as it is I am weak, and here I am exciting myself, squandering the last of my strength. What anguish, oh, what anguish … And it is obvious to me that I have not yet removed the final film from my fear.”

He became lost in thought. Then he dropped the pencil, got up, began walking. The striking of the clock reached his ears. Using its chimes as a platform, footfalls rose to the surface; the platform floated away, but the footfalls remained
and now two persons entered the cell: Rodion with the soup and the Librarian with the catalogue.

The latter was a man of tremendous size but sickly appearance, pale, with shadows under his eyes, with a bald spot encircled by a dark crown of hair, with a long torso in a blue sweater, faded in places and with indigo patches on the elbows. He had his hands in the pockets of his pants, which were narrow as death, and clutched under his arm a large book, bound in black leather. Cincinnatus had already once had the pleasure of seeing him.

“The catalogue,” said the Librarian, whose speech was distinguished by a kind of defiant laconicism.

“Fine, leave it here,” said Cincinnatus, “I shall choose something. If you would like to wait, to sit down for a minute, please do. If, however, you should like to go …”

“To go,” said the Librarian.

“All right. Then I shall return the catalogue through Rodion. Here, you may take these back with you … These magazines of the ancients are wonderfully moving … With this weighty volume I went down, you know, as with a ballast, to the bottom of time. An enchanting sensation.”

“No,” said the Librarian.

“Bring me some more—I’ll copy out the years I want. And some novel, a recent one. You are going already? You have everything?”

Left alone, Cincinnatus went to work on the soup, simultaneously leafing through the catalogue. Its nucleus was carefully and attractively printed; amid the printed text numerous titles were inserted in red ink, in a small but precise hand. It was difficult for someone who was not a specialist to make sense of the catalogue, since the titles
were arranged not in alphabetical order, but according to the number of pages in each, with notations as to how many extra sheets (in order to avoid duplication) had been pasted into this or that book. Therefore Cincinnatus searched without any definite goal in mind, picking out whatever happened to seem attractive. The catalogue was kept in a state of exemplary cleanness; this made it all the more surprising that on the white verso of one of the first pages a child’s hand had made a series of pencil drawings, whose meaning at first escaped Cincinnatus.

“Please accept my sincerest congratulations,” said the director in his unctuous bass as he entered Cincinnatus’s cell next morning. Rodrig Ivanovich seemed even more spruce than usual: the dorsal part of his best frock coat was stuffed with cotton padding like a Russian coachman’s, making his back look broad, smooth, and fat; his wig was glossy as new; the rich dough of his chin seemed to be powdered with flour, while in his buttonhole there was a pink waxy flower with a speckled mouth. From behind his stately figure—he had stopped on the threshold—the prison employees peeked curiously, also decked out in their Sunday best, also with their hair slicked down; Rodion had even put on some little medal.

“I am ready. I shall get dressed at once. I knew it would be today.”

“Congratulations,” repeated the director, paying no attention to Cincinnatus’s jerky agitation. “I have the honor to inform you that henceforth you have a neighbor—yes, yes, he has just moved in. You have grown tired of waiting, I bet? Well, don’t worry—now, with a confidant, with a pal, to play and work with, you won’t find it so dull. And, what is more—but this, of course, must remain strictly between ourselves—I can inform you that permission has come for you to have an interview with your spouse,
demain matin.”

Cincinnatus lay back down on the cot and said, “Yes, that’s fine. I thank you, rag doll, coachman, painted swine … Excuse me, I am a little …”

Here the walls of the cell started to bulge and dimple, like reflections in disturbed water; the director began to ripple, the cot became a boat. Cincinnatus grabbed the side in order to keep his balance, but the oarlock came off in his hand, and, neck-deep, among a thousand speckled flowers, he began to swim, got tangled, began sinking. Sleeves rolled up, they started poking at him with punting poles and grappling hooks, in order to snare him and pull him to the shore. They fished him out.

“Nerves, nerves, a regular little woman,” said the prison doctor—alias Rodrig Ivanovich—with a smile. “Breathe freely. You can eat everything. Do you ever have night sweats? Go on as you are, and, if you are very obedient, maybe we shall let you take a quick peek at the new boy … but mind you, only a quick peek …”

“How long … that interview … how much time shall we be given? …” Cincinnatus uttered with difficulty.

“In a minute, in a minute. Do not be in such a hurry, do not get excited. We promised to show him to you, and we will. Put on your slippers, straighten your hair. I think that …” The director looked interrogatively at Rodion, who nodded. “But please observe absolute silence,” he again addressed Cincinnatus, “and don’t grab at anything with your hands. Come, get up, get up. You haven’t deserved this—you, my friend, are behaving badly, but still you have the permission—Now—not a word, quiet as a mouse …”